I believe a life worthwhile living is giving your utmost in everything that life entails.

Seeing the merits in every individual

February 2017

I have always told myself that I will not have any preconception about people based on their socioeconomic status or their occupation and no matter how unglamorous their job might be, I will never place a stereotype on anyone because I vehemently believe that it is a fallacy to judge people based on how well people do in life because what is congruent to me is how people treat other people and how people treat themselves.

Granted, it is an incontrovertible fact that our self-worth mainly stems from our social standing in life yet at the same time it is poignant that most of us tend to peg our self-worth heavily towards our extrinsic achievements instead of our character and virtues in life. Sometimes, what we deem as success is merely a series of fortunate events that went well for the other party and success by large, is not entirely an indictment of one’s character — being successful does not necessarily mean that one is better in life than someone who is less successful, then again, what is success?

Hypothetically speaking, the cleaner lady whom you see on a daily basis could possibly be putting her children through university by scrimping and saving or the lowly executive assistant who is way older than you could possibly be forgoing his academical pursuits to put food on the table for his family, and what does that say about their character and what is it about us that is better than them?

For this reason, one of my principles in life is to treat everyone from all walks of life as equals; no matter what job they are doing, how well educated they are, or what kind of background they come from, I’ll never belittle anyone based on their social status because I believe that everyone deserves a chance to prove themselves right. However, what I cannot condone is people with questionable character; hypocrites who adopt the holier than thou demeanour when speaking to someone who is perceived to be of a lower social status than himself, and when speaking to someone who is perceived to be of a higher social status, they speak in niceties because of their insecurities which perpetuate them.

Of course, I am not discounting the fact that there are countless of people out there who are successful today because they gritted and grinded to pave the way for their very own success and that is indeed, a validation of their character, resilience, and mental fortitude through the numerous adversities which they have faced along their way to success. Hands down to them for that because they deserve it.